Saturday, May 11, 2019

Here is a link to the slides the presentation on Summits On The Air (SOTA) that was given to the San Diego ARES team on 5/11/2019 in San Diego, CA. Thanks to the other SOTA operators that contributed to this presentation, KE6MT, K6ARK, and other SOTA operators that helped me.

Saturday, May 4, 2019

Today I headed up to Monserate Mountain (W6/CT-235 - Monserate Mountain)
to do a little hiking and play radio.
It’s been several weeks since I’ve been able to get out and I haven’t
been riding my bike so it felt good to hit the trail. I was originally planning on a hike in the
same area to W6/SC-445. I did 445 last
year and remembered it to be a real thigh burner as well as having a couple of
spots where the weeds were so thick across the road it was a real bear... I did
a search after sleeping in this morning and found Monserate very close to that
one. It has been activated quite a few times and has a
published trail so I figured it would be a better choice given my current
fitness.

Sunday, April 21, 2019

I’ve had a few people ask me what “time slot”
(TS) they should use when setting up a talkgroup on a particular repeater. For DMR Tip 02, I'll focus on answering this and give you links for more information on finding repeaters and configuring your radio correctly.

With a TDMA (time division
multiple access) system like DMR, the mobile or portable radios are
synchronized typically by a repeater and assigned a time slot. In DMR Tier 2,
there are two time slots, i.e.
2-slot TDMA. A mobile radio transmits for 30 milliseconds and then receives for
30 milliseconds. It listens for a permission to transmit and then begins a call
to all other talk group members who will also receive on that same time slot,
e.g., Time Slot 1. Meanwhile, a different group of users on another talk group
could be using Time Slot 2 simultaneously. Well almost simultaneously, offset
by 30 ms., but you would never know the difference, because two voices can come
out of two radios simultaneously from the same repeater.

Tuesday, April 9, 2019

This is a recap of my adventures at Socal Spring SOTAFest 2019. My friend Adam, K6ARK, organized a trip for ham radio
operators that enjoy doing “summits on the air”, (SOTA). We planned to meet at a campground, hike up
to bunch of nearby summits to “activate” them, getting contacts in the US and
beyond, and then do the next peak. There
will also be a lot of stories about past epic conquests, radio and antenna gear,
and techniques. Hams also build a lot of
different pieces of their own gear, from custom radios to antennas, and other
gizmos.

The original destination was near Big Bear, CA
but the weather called for a chance of rain so we went out to the southern
desert region to Sawtooth Campground, which is surrounded by SOTA summits.Although Adam announce the meetup on a few
different mailing lists, we only had two other hams that were going to be able
to join us, Scott (N0OI), and his wife, Corrine (N2ZIP).I’ll take some of the burden and help with
the marketing campaign next time. (Click on photos for larger)

Saturday, March 30, 2019

Today’s hike took me up to Sycuan Peak (W6/SC-203 - Sycuan Peak).This is a short hike but steap at
points.I decided to sleep in this
morning and headed out at about 10.The
weather was clear with visibility of a million miles.It was just under 80 and a nice hike up.The peak had a slight breeze and it was very
enjoyable, I just wish I had brought my chair, I would have stayed up there
longer.

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

This next post on my Digital Mobile Radio
(DMR) tips series, we’ll look at an easy way to test our radio and also check
that the repeater is working properly.
To do this, use the Parrot talk group.
By using this talkgroup, everything you transmit is recorded and played
back to your radio.

[This
article assumes you have a DMR radio and can program it to use a repeater and
talkgroup. ]

Using the parrot talk group, every
transmission is repeated back to the radio. This allows the operator to
testmultiple things.

●Verify that the radio is working
and getting into the repeater.

●Because the parrot repeater is on
the internet, when you hear yourself, this verifies that the repeater is
working and it’s connected to the Brandmeister network.

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About Me

Chris Claborne is incredibly curious about technology, people and the world and is always trying to understand how things work. He's a "Technology Geek". The internet is fascinating place to learn, interact and watch from a technology perspective. He has 23+ years in IT for Fortune 500 companies and a specific interests in Cloud Computing.
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